College Board, CZI Announce Partnership on Personalized Learning

May 17, 2017

With a focus on students in lower-income communities and rural areas, the College Board and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have announced a two-year partnership focused on helping millions of students better prepare for college and a career.

Through the partnership, the College Board will work to expand access to unique, personalized learning pathways — including PSAT-related assessments, interactive SAT practice, and Advanced Placement courses — all of which have been found to better prepare students and help them identify a postsecondary program that fits their needs and passions.

Each year, more than 4.3 million students take PSAT-related assessments. With the funding from CZI, the College Board will take steps to scale the Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy, a module on the popular Khan Academy platform that provides free, personalized study tools for all students looking to prepare for the SAT; connect more students to near-peer advisors through the College Advising Corps, a national organization that places recent college graduates as full-time college advisors in underserved high schools across the country; and implement the AP Computer Science Principles program in every school district in the country. To better understand the often-invisible barriers that can hold students back, the College Board and CZI also will convene world-class researchers and experts in the field of academic motivation and share those conversations with the broader education community.

Although the organization has not disclosed how much CZI is contributing to the effort, College Board president David Coleman told USA Today it was a "multimillion-dollar" grant. "When we look at students in America, we see incredible talent, but there are too many barriers in the way," Coleman added. "The College Board and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are united in our belief that if we clear a path for all students, they won't just walk down it, they'll run."